


Red Duty, Black Honor

by ObsidianJade



Series: Duty and Honor [3]
Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianJade/pseuds/ObsidianJade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was inevitable, he realized, as he settled the white haori across his shoulders. Time progressed, change happened, and life went on. </p>
<p> - The intertwining lives of the Shinigami in post-War Seireitei.  Slow-burn ByaRen and other pairings.  Warnings by chapter, see Series page for full list.</p>
<p>This story is COMPLETE on <a href="http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5665175/1/Red-Duty-Black-Honor">here</a> on FFN, and the sequel is being posted.  It is undergoing editing as it is crossposted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brotherhood

**Author's Note:**

> Since I'm FINALLY getting back into my Bleach writing after a very long hiatus, I figured it was about time to start crossposting RDBH over here. The move allows me to make some fixes and edits to the original version, as well as review my own established timeline so that I can try to keep things straight while I finish up the sequel, Bonds of Honor. This story was originally written in a period of about seven months spanning from December of '09 and running through June of 2010, and was my first novel-length fanwork. I still rank it as one of my best writing accomplishments, and I hope you can share that opinion.
> 
> ~ Jade
> 
> Timeline: Set post - War. Spoilers will be vague to nonexistent for the most, but may crop up for all current (387) chapters. 
> 
> Warnings: For this chapter, primary warning is Renji’s mouth. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach or profit from this work in any way. Kubo is a god and I am merely playing in his world.

_“You will not touch my sister again!”_ The words, spoken at a furious pitch that tore across the courtyard of the Sixth Division barracks, were accompanied by a wave of reiatsu, frigidly cold and sharp-edged. 

It was met, and rebuffed, by another wave, this one hot, wild, scorching. “Like fuck I won’t, you bastard,” Abarai Renji snarled back, his hand clenching around Zabimaru’s hilt until his knuckles blanched. “What the hell right do you have to call her your sister, anyway? You swoop in like some fucking avenging angel and save her, but it’s always _after_ the fact! _After_ we got out of Rukongai. _After_ Ichigo saved her. _After_ she was almost killed by an Espada! After, after, after! You’re never there when she really needs you! _You_ weren’t the one that gave up your meals and your blankets at nights so that she wouldn’t be cold and hungry. _You_ weren’t the one who gave up your goddamn body to some bastard in the streets just to keep her safe!” 

Tightening his grip on Zabimaru’s hilt, Renji stormed forward, the wild edges of his reiatsu tangling and fighting with the sharper, clean-cut edges of the other’s. 

“Fact is, _sir,_ ” he snarled, leaning forward until he was nose to nose with the other man, “You may have taken Gin’s blade to save Rukia, but I took _yours_. So you tell me - which one of us is _really_ her brother?”

And with that, Renji spun on his heel and stormed out of the courtyard, leaving Kuchiki Byakuya shocked speechless in his wake. 

____________________________________

It had been so fucking _stupid_. A whole damn lump of misunderstandings, piled one on top of another too fast to dig out of. Rukia had been having lunch with Ukitake-taichou - why, Renji still didn’t know - when the man’s disease had flared up, badly. The coughing fit had been bloody, and violent, and if the medics he’d spoken to were to be believed, severe enough for real concern. If Rukia hadn’t started performing healing kidou on him as soon as it struck, the effects of it would have been much worse.

Renji had been returning from lunch with Shuuhei, Kira, and Matsumoto when they saw the Fourth descend in force on the barracks of the Thirteenth. Worried, they had followed them in, only to find the medics sweeping Ukitake’s unresponsive form back to their own division for treatment, and a shell-shocked Rukia spattered with the man’s blood. 

She’d looked so shaken, so terrified, that Renji did what he’d always done when they were nothing more than stray dogs on the streets of Inuzuri - pulled her into his arms, holding her close, muttering in her ear that he would protect her. She let him hold her for a few minutes, until she was calm, then shoved him off and headed for the Fourth Division, sparing Renji only a glance over her shoulder and a quick smile of thanks.

It was simply bad luck that Rangiku had still been drunk off her ass, and somehow, within an hour of the incident, had managed to mutate the entire affair from an innocent hug into a damn makeout session, and worse luck that Kuchiki-taichou had managed to overhear the damn mutated rumor on his way into the office after a meeting with the Kuchiki Clan elders. The latter was always enough to put him in a foul mood; the former on top of it was quite enough to make him lose his formidable temper. 

He’d stormed into the office, the scent of cherry blossoms riding ahead of him like a storm front, slammed both hands down on Renji’s desk, and demanded to know what had transpired between Renji and Rukia. 

__________________________

_Bewildered, Renji stared back up at his captain. “What are you talking about?”_

_The razor-edge of reiatsu hummed, threatened. “Do not play me for a fool, Abarai. What have you been doing to my sister?”_

_“I haven’t been doing anything! What are you tryin’ to say?”_

_“I am not trying - I am_ telling _you that if you ever threaten to compromise Rukia’s purity, the consequences to you will be fatal.”_

_Renji had lost his temper, then. Seizing Zabimaru, he’d headed for the door, struggling to take the high road and avoid an argument. It might have worked, too, had Byakuya not followed him._

_They had just entered the courtyard, where most of the division was finishing their lunches or practicing kata, when Byakuya had lost his faltering grip on his temper and snarled, “You will not touch my sister again!”_

___________________________________

“Fuck.” 

“Yeah, pr’y much,” Ikkaku drawled from the other side of the tree they were sitting under. “Why’d ya yell at him, anyway? E’en I know tha’s stupid.”

“Gimme the sake, Ikkaku, you’ve had enough.”

“An’ you haven’t?”

“I’m still coherent, aren’t I?”

A grunt was his only response, but the gourd landed in his lap anyway. Uncorking it, Renji drank. 

“You really wanna know why I yelled at him?”

“Asked, din’t I?”

“When I saw Rukia in Ukitake’s office, she looked so... broken. She had the same damn look in her eyes that she did when she was supposed to be executed. An’ it brought back all those damn memories... the way he’d been so damn cold, how he didn’t care if she died.” Snorting, Renji took another swig of the alcohol, barely noticing the burn. “He calls her his sister, and he didn’t fucking care if she _died_! Of course I was gonna be mad. And then he came in and started yellin’ at me about Rukia and her purity and I dunno what the _fuck_ that was all about...”

“Che, that’s Ran’s fault. Y’din’t hear?”

“Hear... what?”

Forty seconds later, Renji was fully prepared to commit homicide. He was already in trouble - might as well earn it. He was, thankfully, distracted from his murderous thoughts by the presence of another reiatsu, tentative and familiar. 

“Down here, Rikichi,” Renji called with a sigh, and the young Shinigami appeared a few seconds later, hopping awkwardly down the slope to the tree where the duo were sitting. He stumbled the last few feet and recovered by bounding clumsily forward, the beads in his hair clacking.

“Renji-san -”

“Kuchiki-taichou made any concrete plans to murder me yet?”

“Ah, no, after you left he just stood there for a second, then ordered everyone to get back to work and disappeared. I think he might have gone home...?”

Renji snorted. “Digging my grave as we speak, no doubt. Though if he uses Senbonzakura on me, I won’t need one.” Pushing himself to his feet with a sigh, Renji dropped the sake gourd back into Ikkaku’s lap, and, ignoring the older man’s curses, motioned for Rikichi to follow him. He had something he needed to do.

_____________________________

“You’re an idiot, Byaka-bo.”

The noble didn’t stir from his place at the window. “Surely you did not come all the way to the Seireitei simply to inform me of that.”

Smirking, Yoruichi flopped down on the couch, kicking her delicate feet in the air to admire the dark-purple polish on her toenails. “Nah, came to check on Jyuushiro. He’s doing better, if you were wondering.”

Byakuya hadn’t been - he’d stopped in to see the other captain earlier. “Then why are you here, harassing me?”

“Because you need to be reminded when you’re an idiot. It happens so infrequently I don’t think you recognize the signs, even when they are biting you in the ass.”

Raising an eyebrow at the backhanded compliment, Byakuya finally turned to face the woman sprawled across his couch. “I acted... hastily. I allowed my emotions to overtake my logic and common sense.”

“Been a while,” Yoruichi remarked dryly, and Byakuya very nearly smiled. It had been a while - since his childhood, over a century before, when the young Shihoin princess had often goaded the then-temperamental Kuchiki scion into games of flash-tag. 

“So, you wanna tell me why you started screaming at your lieutenant in the middle of the barracks?”

“I was not screaming. Nor did I start in the middle of the barracks. I was initially attempting to conduct a conversation in our office, and it... got out of hand.”

“I’ll say. So, you gonna tell me what had you so upset? Family troubles?”

Resigning himself to the interrogation, Byakuya sat in a chair facing the couch, sparing the woman a glare as he did so. “My meeting with the clan elders this morning did not go as I might have hoped,” he admitted sourly. When Yoruichi raised an eyebrow in inquiry, he sighed faintly and began.

_____________________________________

_“The situation is unacceptable,” came the grating voice of his grandmother. “According to the reports we received, you were nearly killed multiple times in the recent war. You have no heirs, and Rukia is untrained and unfit to accept leadership of the Kuchiki clan. Therefore, we have come to the decision that if you have not found, married, and impregnated a suitable candidate within the year, Rukia shall be betrothed and wedded in order to provide a viable heir for the clan.”_

______________________________________

“And you’re honestly going to go through with that?” Yoruichi demanded, aghast. “You haven’t so much as looked at another woman since Hisana died, and now they want you to just up and marry again?”

“I apparently have very little choice in the matter. It is the decision of the clan.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Byaka-bo, but you are the head of the clan, right?” When he did nothing more than arch an ironic brow at her, she continued, waving her hands for emphasis. “You’re supposed to be the one telling them what to do, not letting yourself get lead around by the nose! Rukia certainly won’t roll over for whatever suitor they happen to pick out - I don’t see any reason you should!”

“It is my duty to my clan, Yoruichi. If something is required of me, I have no choice.”

“So your clan requires you to go out and find some random woman who just happens to have the right pedigree to satisfy your useless, pompous-ass clan elders, marry her and get a child on her even though there is no chance you’re going to love her, and spend the next however-long being utterly miserable because of it?”

“Essentially.”

“Gods, Byakuya! Isn’t your happiness worth more than that?!”

“The mere fact that you consider your personal happiness to be of greater necessity than duty to your clan is why the House of Shihoin lies in ruins, Yoruichi. Now, please. Leave me.”

Sighing, the woman slowly rolled off the couch and onto her feet. “Look, Byakuya. I’ve been around longer than you, and I’ve seen a lot more. And I grant you, my clan has fallen. But I have a good life, good friends, people I love. I enjoy my life. Can you say the same?”

He didn’t answer her, just stared silently at an empty spot in the air above the couch until she finally gave up and turned to leave. She was halfway out the door when his voice called her back.

“Yoruichi.”

“Hmm?”

“Would you marry me?”

He wasn’t serious - she knew that, just by the angle of his eyes. “Hell, no,” she answered, laughing. “We’d kill each other within a week. And Kisuke wouldn’t be particularly happy if I was suddenly seeing another man.”

A quirk of Byakuya’s lips answered her; she smiled back at her old friend, turning once again to leave. As she breezed out, she threw a final word of advice over her shoulder. “Apologize to Renji - he’s the best lieutenant you’ll ever find!”

And with that, she was gone, a burst of Flash taking the goddess back to her happy life and the man she loved. 

Alone in the mansion, Byakuya turned back to the window and sighed.

______________________________________

_...it is with deep regret that I therefore resign my commission as Lieutenant of the Sixth Division of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads, effective immediately._

_Abarai Renji_

He added his signature with a flourish - not because he was happy, rather; angry and defiant. He had made his case clear; an irreconcilable clash of personalities between himself and his captain was threatening the morale of the squad, and based on ‘the events occurring earlier this afternoon,’ he felt it was best all around if he removed himself from the situation. 

“There. Done.” Blowing on the parchment to dry the ink, he shot a glance towards his couch, where Rikichi sat, toying nervously with the beads in his hair. 

“Renji-san? Where will you go, now?”

Rolling up the parchment, Renji shrugged slightly. “Back to the ‘leventh, I suppose. Zaraki doesn’t give a damn about insubordination. Hell, I think he actually likes it. I won’t make lieutenant there, but the fourth seat’s open. It’s enough.”

“Should I -”

“Rikichi, don’t even think of transferring. The Eleventh would eat you alive.” Seeing the younger man’s hurt expression, Renji backpedaled a bit, quickly adding, “It’s not the end of the world, ya’ know. I’ll still train you. Just... stay with the Sixth. It’s a good division.”

“Yeah, but you _made_ it good, Renji-san. Kuchiki-taichou is... hard to work for, you know that. You were the one that we all went to, the lower ranks. We can’t go to him like we go to you.”

“You’ll work somethin’ out, kid. The Sixth managed perfectly well before me, it’ll do fine now. Here,” he added gruffly, tossing the paper at Rikichi, who bobbled it from hand to hand for a moment before catching it, “go leave that on Kuchiki-taichou’s desk. I’ll deal with my transfer paperwork after he signs off on my dismissal.”

“If you say so, Renji-san.” Bowing nervously, the younger man retreated to the door, pausing just long enough to add, “We’ll miss you, sir,” before he took himself out.

“Yeah,” Renji muttered, staring at the closed door. “I’ll miss you guys, too.”

____________________________________

“I hope you’re not planning on jumping off.”

Renji snorted, not turning from his position, sitting on the very edge of Sokyoku Hill. His feet were dangling over the incredible void, the edges of his hakama ruffling in the light breeze. 

“Depends on how mad your brother still is. It’d probably be a more merciful death than Senbonzakura.”

Rukia gave him a wan smile as she settled herself cross-legged next to him, peering uneasily over the drop. “Nii-sama respects you... he’d use Bankai. It would be over quickly. I’m _joking _!” She added, when Renji turned an appalled look to her. “Nii-sama’s not going to kill you, I promise.”__

__“Yeah? Well, last I heard, I wasn’t ever allowed to touch you again, so you’ll forgive me if I’m just a little skeptical,” he shot back, turning his glare back on the empty space over the Seireitei._ _

__He did love Rukia - there was no denying that. However, he didn’t love her in the way Byakuya was afraid of. They’d been through every terror, every ugliness imaginable in Inuzuri, seen one another exposed to the worst sort of pains. They’d stolen, fought, and sacrificed for each other. It was a bond between them that was closer than that of lovers - it was a bond of family._ _

__“Yeah, about that...” Rukia began, and was almost immediately cut off by a deeper voice._ _

__“I apologize.”_ _

__Renji yelped; it was only the iron grip fisted in the back of his kosode that kept him from tumbling headfirst over the edge of the hill in shock. Twisting around, he stared in utter disbelief at Byakuya, who was crouched inches behind him, one hand still bunched in the fabric between Renji’s shoulder blades._ _

__Rukia, on Renji’s other side, snickered faintly. “Nii-sama knew you wouldn’t stick around if he showed up alone, so he asked me to distract you. Play nice,” she admonished, kissed Renji’s cheek, bowed respectfully to her brother, and calmly took herself off without another word._ _

__Awkwardly, Renji turned back to face his captain - former captain?? - quite at a loss for words._ _

__“Sir, I -”_ _

__“I received your letter,” Byakuya interrupted, cutting off Renji’s tumultuous thoughts. “And your resignation is not accepted.”_ _

__“You... huh?”_ _

__“Need I make myself more clear?” Raising his free hand, Byakuya opened his fist; a rain of confetti-fine scraps of paper tumbled free, drifting over Renji’s lap. The only fragment larger than an inch across bore a recognizable mark - Renji’s own signature. The one he had defiantly scrawled across that same piece of paper only a few hours ago. Looking at the scraps, Renji suppressed a hysterical urge to laugh. The parchment hadn’t been torn; the edges were far too neat. Kuchiki-taichou had unleashed Senbonzakura on Renji’s letter of resignation._ _

__“You are my lieutenant,” Kuchiki-taichou said, calmly. “I intend to keep you as my lieutenant for as long as you are at that rank. Therefore, I have rejected your resignation.”_ _

__“I can see that, sir.”_ _

__Byakuya sighed, his frustration ruffling over Renji’s ear. “And you were not at fault for our... altercation earlier.”_ _

__“Sir?”_ _

__“I accept full responsibility for over-reacting. And I apologize.”_ _

__The last part was enough of a shock that Renji very nearly fell over the edge again - thankfully, Byakuya’s hand was still fisted in Renji’s kosode and prevented the tumble._ _

__“Perhaps,” the noble suggested dryly as he rose to his feet, “we should continue this discussion in a less hazardous locale?”_ _

__“...yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Renji answered, and, standing, fell in step with his captain as they walked away._ _

____________________________________________________ _


	2. Marks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note on Terminology: Although I will not be scattering this work with random Japanese phrases, I will be using the terms Taichou/Captain and Fukutaichou/Lieutenant/Vice-Captain interchangeably, just because I think one will occasionally sound better in context than the other. Also, I will be be using the phonetic ‘-ou’ spellings for most names and terms - please don’t harass me about accent marks! (I can never get them to translate correctly anyway, -___-*.)
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Discussion of underage prostitution, some profanity.
> 
> ~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

“About earlier - ”

The words came abruptly out of a half-hour stretch of silence, and startled Renji badly enough that he spilled the tea he’d been drinking down the front of his kosode. “Ow, shit! Ah, I’m sorry, sir, what were you saying?”

Still sitting in his picture-perfect seiza, Byakuya very calmly passed a napkin across the table, and Renji dabbed apologetically at the tea on his uniform. 

“During our... argument... earlier, you mentioned something that I would... like clarified.”

The uncharacteristic hesitation in his captain’s voice was enough to give Renji pause. Very slowly, he stopped blotting and set the napkin aside. “ ‘You weren’t the one who gave up your goddamn body to some bastard in the streets just to keep her safe’?”

Byakuya nodded slightly. “If you do not wish to discuss the matter, I will not press it. However...”

Renji sighed, tipped his head back and closed his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was dull, toneless. “It’s all right, sir. It was a long time ago. 

“We were still kids, half-starved, freezing in the streets. Rukia found a food merchant who wasn’t paying close attention, and we took everything we could carry from him, just to keep from starving. But he was paying more attention than we’d thought, and he grabbed Rukia. I knew what he would’ve done to her, so I offered myself instead. He didn’t refuse, and I... couldn’t.”

Was it his imagination, or had he heard a gasp from the other side of the table? He shrugged it off, keeping his eyes closed, trying not to remember. “It got easier, after the first time.”

“After the -”

The shock, the utter _dismay_ in his captain’s voice, prompted Renji to open his eyes again. He caught the mercurial gaze over the narrow distance of the table, over the tremendous distance of their histories, and allowed himself a bitter smile. “It was Rukongai, sir. You do what you have to, in order to survive. I was young, attractive, healthy. That was enough.” 

The horror in Byakuya’s eyes didn’t lessen, and after a few seconds more, Renji was forced to turn his gaze away and close his eyes again. “It kept us fed. It kept the others protected. That was all I needed to know.”

“Renji, I -” the deep voice trailed off, uncertain, and Renji opened his eyes again to glare at his captain.

“Don’t pity me, dammit. It’s not like I’m the only one - ask Yumi, ask Shuuhei, hell, any of us Rukongai brats. You’ll probably get the same story. Like I said; you do what you have to in order to survive.”

“Do not mistake admiration for pity, Abarai,” came the sharp retort, and Renji stared, incredulous. _Admiration_? From _Kuchiki Byakuya_?? “Clearly, you came through such appalling circumstances with exceptional strength of mind and character. I would not presume to deny that by pitying you.” 

There was another long pause, tense and uncomfortable, before Byakuya spoke again. “I must ask, did Rukia...?”

Renji snorted. “Hell, no. She’s as pure as her Zanpakutou. She was always... too good for that sort of thing.”

“I said I do not pity you, Renji, and I will not. However, I never again wish to hear you imply that you are any less deserving of respect than Rukia is.”

“Yes - I mean, no, sir,” Renji answered, feeling rather off-balance. He’d never discussed his history with his captain, not like this. And he’d certainly never expected Kuchiki Byakuya, of all people, to say he admired Renji for having suffered a history as a child whore. 

The next few moments passed with no sound beyond the whisper of fabric and the clink of their teacups, but it was a comfortable silence, this time. It was, again, Byakuya who broke it.

“We are indebted to you.”

Renji started again, but his cup was nearly empty this time, and he managed to keep from spilling it. “Who’s ‘we’?”

A slight gesture of one slender hand somehow managed to encompass not only the austerely elegant room they were in, but the entire mansion that surrounded them. “The Kuchiki clan as a whole, and myself in particular. For your defense of Rukia,” he added, seeing Renji’s questioning look. “Although I had not realized it before today, I owe you a great debt in her honor.”

“Forget it,” Renji answered tersely. “We protect one another. Like I said, she’s a sister to me, too. She - and you - don’t owe me anything.”

“A noble’s debt is not so easily dismissed.”

“Fine,” Renji sighed, exasperation getting the better of him. “You wanna repay me? Lend me a kosode for the night. Mine’s still soaked with tea.”

____________________________________

It was a little tight in the shoulders, which wasn’t unexpected. It was Byakuya’s, after all, and the man was considerably smaller-framed than his lieutenant. Still, it would be quite sufficient for Renji to journey home in.

“Thanks,” he offered, grinning sheepishly, as he tucked the trailing hem into his hakama and jerked the ties tight again. 

Byakuya didn’t answer; he was still regarding Renji with an oddly contemplative expression, one he’d first gained when the other man had unselfconsciously stripped off his tea-soaked kosode and juban, the stark blackness of his tattoos rich against his golden skin.

“Somethin’ wrong, taichou?”

“No, nothing. Are all of your marks truly from your Zanpakutou?”

“Eh, yeah. Zabimaru brands ‘em on me whenever I reach a new stage in my training. They about doubled when I reached Bankai.”

Byakuya nodded slowly, thoughts moving behind his eyes. “I assume you are not aware that only a very few Shinigami ever have the honor of being marked by their Zanpakutou?”

Renji blinked. He hadn’t been, actually. Quite frankly, he’d assumed that the marks were something unique to himself and Zabimaru, particularly since the nue had similar patterns in his fur. 

“In fact, you are only the fourth current Shinigami I am aware of to bear a mark of favor such as that - and yours is by far the most extensive.”

Renji sent a wordless question at Zabimaru and received only a grunt in response; the nue was soundly asleep and had no intentions of waking for something as unimportant as a lecture on Zanpakutou lore. 

“Who are the other three?” he asked, genuinely curious, when it was clear the information wouldn’t be volunteered by either party.

“Captain Ukitake - he has twin fish, marked on his hips, Captain Kyouraku, whom I believe has a two-headed dragon across his shoulders, and... myself.”

“ _You_ , captain?!”

An upward twitch of the lips - Byakuya’s equivalent of a smile - danced across that elegant mouth for a second. Turning his back to Renji, the noble quietly untucked his kosode and juban and slipped them off, leaving his back bare to Renji’s eyes. 

Byakuya’s skin was not flawless, as some might have assumed. He was an active Shinigami; he had scars. The old ones, delicate silver lines, were almost invisible, but the newer ones, the ones sustained during the War, were still pink-edged, standing out in sharp relief against his alabaster skin. 

Renji’s eyes skipped across the spiderweb-pattern of scarring on his captain’s shoulder, following the silken ripple of muscle down, tracing the curvature of the spine, and it was then that he saw Senbonzakura’s mark. 

It was wrought entirely in shades of silver and pink, almost vanishing into Byakuya’s skin. The delicate, unbelievably intricate tracing of a cherry tree in full bloom was spread across the small of Byakuya’s back, the roots dipping below the waistband of his hakama, the highest edges of the branches ending only a few inches below his shoulder blades. It was exquisite. 

“Captain, that’s.... it’s beautiful,” Renji whispered, moving forward, dreamlike, on his knees behind the other man, so that he could better see the artistry displayed on his captain’s skin. 

“Senbonzakura thanks you for the compliment,” came the answer, shaded with something like amusement. Byakuya was still facing away from him, bare skin laid tantalizingly within reach...

Zabimaru hissed in his mind. Abruptly conscious of himself, Renji jerked back, pulling away fingers that had been a bare inch from brushing his captain’s back. Scrambling backwards on his knees, he returned to the other side of the table, trying to slow his breathing. What the hell had he ben thinking? First shouting at his captain in full view of the squad, then now....

Biting his tongue to stifle a groan, Renji dropped his head in a deep bow, letting the respectful gesture keep him away from his Captain’s too-perceptive gaze. 

“Thank you, sir, for this evening and allowing me the honor of seeing your mark. And... I should... be getting home, I think.”

“As you wish,” Byakuya replied evenly, sliding his kosode loosely back over his shoulders. “And I will see you in the morning, fukutaichou.”

“Hai, captain!” Flashing the man a jaunty salute, Renji grinned, slipped politely out the door - and then fled, as fast as his shunpo would take him.

_____________________________________

“ _You shouldn’t tease the boy like that, Byakuya-sama,_ ” Senbonzakura chided from the back of his mind. “ _One of these days, he_ will _best you_.”

“I know,” Byakuya replied, settling himself back at the table to finish his tea. “There has never been a moment when I have doubted it.”

_____*________*__________*__________*_____

“Oh! Good afternoon, Ukitake-taichou! You’re looking much better.”

“Given that when you saw me yesterday I was being hauled bodily out of my office by the Fourth Division, I would rather hope I’m looking better,” the captain answered dryly, but the sarcasm was softened with a smile. “How are you, Abarai-fukutaichou?”

“Fine, thanks.” A bit hesitantly, Renji fell in step beside the older man, swinging the bag containing his lunch aimlessly at his side while turning the question over and over in his mind. Of course, Ukitake was the one to ask - Kyouraku would just wave a sake bottle at him rather than answering - but it was a somewhat impertinent and very personal thing to simply ask outright....

“Did you have a question, Renji?”

Damn it, how did the man _do_ that?! “I’m that transparent, eh? I do, actually, but it’s... kinda personal.”

“In which case I reserve the right not to answer, but by all means, please ask.”

“Thank you, sir. Is it true, that you have a Zanpakutou mark? Two fish?”

“Ah, so you’ve made up with Byakuya-kun!”

Renji blinked. Maybe it was a side effect of living so long, that allowed the man to jump to conclusions so quickly and so accurately? “Ah, yes, sir. He apologized and we came to terms last night.... I think.”

“That’s very good to hear, Renji. And yes, Sougyo no Kotowari was kind enough to mark me. As you said, twin fish. I take it, then, that Byakuya showed you his own mark? It is exquisite, is it not?”

“Yes, sir, it’s amazing.”

“You know, you caused quite a bit of consternation among the captains when it was revealed that your tattoos were Zanpakutou markings. Generally, only the most powerful captains in the Seireitei would bear marks, and yet you first began to gain yours in the Academy, correct?”

“Yes, sir.” Only captains? “Kuchiki-taichou mentioned last night that yourself and Kyouraku-taichou were the only others he was aware of having marks.”

“Oh, he’s mistaken on that matter - Toushirou-kun and Retsu-san both have marks, not that I’d expect him to know that. Toushirou’s marks are all snowflakes, quite lovely really, though I wouldn’t mention them to him. But, as I said - until you, it was only captains who ever bore Zanpakutou marks. It’s an exceptional honor, you realize - a sign of incredible strength.”

Kyouraku. Ukitake. Unohana. The three oldest and most powerful captains in the Soul Society, after Yamamoto himself. Hitsugaya, the youngest captain in history. And Kuchiki Byakuya - the man Renji had always desired to surpass. 

He was in very, _very_ impressive company. 

“I hadn’t realized that, sir. Thank you.”

“My pleasure. And now, I suppose we’d both best be getting back to our divisions; I have two half-panicked third seats to corral, and your lunch is probably getting cold.”

___________________________

The rest of the week passed without incident. 

Renji and Byakuya fell into a comfortable pattern of working, training, and talking. The revelation of Renji’s history had evidently prompted Byakuya to reciprocate in kind, because Renji learned more over those few days about his captain than he’d ever imagined. 

Byakuya was a surprisingly gifted storyteller; his dry, deadpan delivery and sardonic humor was enough to have Renji in fits of laughter on a daily basis. He would talk over their shared lunch, sharing little snippets of his past, and more than once Renji found himself reliving some incident of the noble’s youth, generally involving Yoruichi and occasionally featuring guest appearances by Kyouraku’s hat, Ukitake’s library, or Sasikabe’s tea set. 

Exactly one week after their argument, a Captain’s meeting kept Byakuya from the office for the morning, preempting their usual lunch session. Feeling bored and perhaps a bit lonely, Renji finished his paperwork quickly and met up with Shuuhei, Kira, and Matsumoto instead, hoping their company would distract him. 

They were still in the middle of their meals when the messenger appeared.

________________________________________

“Wait, they want us to _what_?”

“ _When_?!”

Patiently, the man repeated his message. “Lieutenants Abarai of the Sixth Division and Hisagi of the Ninth Division are to report to the Senkaimon tomorrow morning at 09.00 for a one-month training mission to Karakura Town, Human Realm.”

“I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you people that I have a squad to run? _And_ a newspaper?!” Hisagi snapped, brandishing his chopsticks at the helmeted man as though tempted to be brandishing Kazeshini instead.

“It has been arranged for officers of the Eighth, Tenth, and Thirteenth to handle the affairs of your division while you are in Karakura, Hisagi-fukutaichou.”

Raising an eyebrow, Hisagi turned to Matsumoto. “You know anything about this?”

“Hmm.” Smiling around her sake cup, she leaned forward, batting her eyelashes. “Shuu-kun, how far are you from achieving Bankai?”

“Bankai?” Shuuhei repeated blankly. “Decades, I imagine. I never pursued it under Tousen, and I’ve barely had time to keep up my training since I took over the squad. What do you know that I don’t?”

“Rangiku-san, you know how upset Hitsugaya-taichou gets when you read his confidential papers. Particularly when you’re reading them instead of your own,” Kira scolded from across the table. 

“Aw, you’re no fun...”

“Does Kuchiki-taichou know about this?” Renji demanded of the messenger, who was doing a very good impression of waiting patiently for them to formally acknowledge the message so that he could leave.

“Hai, Abarai-fukutaichou. At the captain's meeting this morning, Kuchiki-taichou was one of the first to suggest it.”

_He... suggested it?_ A dull wave of shock crashed over him, leaving a tingling numbness in its wake. Renji could only stare silently at the messenger, barely aware of Shuuhei finally dismissing the man. He and Byakuya had been on such good terms since the night after the argument - was it only because it had taken this long for his captain to arrange for him to be shipped out? Was this a punishment? Why else would he be sent to the Human World for a month, so soon after their argument?

Barely acknowledging the others, Renji paid for his portion of the meal and headed back to the Sixth as quickly as Shunpo would take him.

__________________________________

“Sir, have I done something wrong?”

“By all means, Abarai-fukutaichou, come in.” The words were dripping sarcasm, which Renji ignored, throwing himself to the floor on his knees. It was rare that Kuchiki-taichou used his private office in the barracks - he generally shared the secondary office with Renji - and he certainly wouldn’t appreciate Renji barging in on him like this. However, it was unavoidable. Renji _needed_ answers.

“My apologies, Kuchiki-taichou, but I received word while you were at the captain’s meeting -”

“That you were being assigned to a month-long training mission in Karakura. This is correct, and be assured that it is no cause for alarm.”

“No cause for -”

“You are being assigned, at my suggestion, to help Hisagi Shuuhei achieve Bankai.” 

When Renji didn’t respond, Byakuya glanced up from his paperwork for the first time since his lieutenant’s interruption. “Close your mouth, fukutaichou, or your tongue will begin attracting dust.”

Shutting his mouth with an audible snap, Renji continued to stare at his captain for a moment longer while that rather incredible tidbit of information processed. 

“Why?” he managed, finally, staggering to the uncomfortable guest’s chair and flopping down in it. 

“I suggested you because you have prior experience in training of this nature. Your training with Sado Yasutora was highly successful. You have gained exceptional talent with your own Bankai, and you and Lieutenant Hisagi are, if I am not mistaken, friends.”

“That’s all true, sir, but... well, why Hisagi? Why now?”

“The Captain’s meeting this morning was to debate Hisagi-fukutaichou’s elevation to the rank of Captain. In order for us to do so, he must have reached Bankai.”

_Ah_. With that last piece of the puzzle, this began to make a bit more sense. “Does he know?”

“If he does not, he will shortly. Notification was sent to him.”

Silently, Renji nodded. “I see. So... I’m leaving tomorrow?”

“Nine a.m. sharp. I will see you off. You may take the afternoon to prepare for your journey.”

Renji nodded slowly. So... it was up to him to help his old senpai reach Captain? If it had been anyone other than Hisagi, he might have felt jealous, but... there was no question in his mind that Shuuhei deserved the promotion. And if Renji could help him achieve it, then so much the better. And for Kuchiki-taichou to have suggested this... “Thank you, sir. For... everything.”

“Thank me again in a month, fukutaichou. Dismissed.”

__________________________________

“So, Captain, huh?”

Hisagi blinked back at him, expression rueful but his dark eyes sparking with humor. “If they’ve put me in your hands? Not likely.”

“Gee, thanks a lot, senpai,” Renji shot back, grinning fiercely. “You know, it’s not wise to insult someone who’s been put in charge of your training.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” came the sardonic response. “When talking to Urahara.”

Renji flipped him off in response.

“Are you always this dignified in the mornings, Abarai-fukutaichou?”

“Taichou!” Hastily folding his hands behind his back, Renji made his best attempt at looking innocent. Renji being Renji, it didn’t work particularly well, and Byakuya raised one ever-dignified eyebrow at his lieutenant in response. Anything they might have said, however, was interrupted by Ukitake and Kyouraku’s appearance.

“Ah, Hisagi-san, Renji-san, you’re early!”

“Didn’t want to eat up too much of your time, sir,” Renji replied, grinning at the senior captain as he and Shuuhei shouldered their packs. 

“I appreciate your consideration. Now then, good luck, both of you, and we’ll see you back here in a month’s time.”

Renji nodded briefly to Ukitake, but his gaze was turned behind the man, to where his own captain stood silent in the morning sun. Just as Renji stepped over the threshold of the Senkaimon, Byakuya silently mouthed the words _‘good luck._ ’

Smiling broadly, Renji stepped forward into the blinding light.


	3. Changes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: Language. 
> 
> Also, it's very short.

“Oy! Anybody home?” Shouldering through the front door of the Urahara shop - hung with a ‘Sorry, Closed!’ sign in Urahara’s appallingly messy handwriting - Renji stared around the darkened interior. “The fuck? Where is everybody?”

A whisper of movement from the far corner of the store caught his attention, and he had just begun to turn when a familiar voice cut through the shadows. 

“Sorry, Renji-kun, they’re aaaaallll gone...” 

Smiling broadly, Ichimaru Gin stepped into the light.

_________________________________

“Son of a -” Throwing down his pack, Shuuhei reached for his Zanpakutou, only to find Renji’s hand securely around his wrist. 

“Relax, senpai. He’s harmless now, remember?”

“He’s _not_ harmless,” Shuuhei scowled, but slowly released his grip on Kazeshini’s hilt all the same. 

Gin had been the only one of the three treasonous Captains to survive the War, and it had only been the intervention of Captain Hitsugaya, Matsumoto Rangiku, and Kira Izuru on his behalf that had prevented him from being executed after it.

After a great deal of debate, Gin had been handed over to Kisuke Urahara ‘for use as an experimental subject,’ his reiatsu channels destroyed and his Zanpakutou shattered. Exactly what Urahara _did_ with the man wasn’t clear, but whatever it was had the odd effect of causing Gin’s eye and hair color to change, at random and entirely unrelated intervals. The last time Renji had been out here, two months before, Gin’s left eye had been brown, his right one blue and purple, and his hair had been neon green. 

Kisuke had evidently put a little more effort into complimenting colors this time around. A royal-blue streak, edged with indigo, colored the main section of Gin’s bangs, highlighting the fact that his eyes - both the same color this week - had been turned to a rich shade of amethyst. The rest of his hair had been returned to its normal shade of silver. He was wearing a hip-length lavender yukata over a pair of blue jeans, a combination that should have looked patently ridiculous, but somehow suited him. His narrow feet were bare, and heavy piece of purple silk cord was knotted loosely around his pale neck. 

Even without prodding the cord with his reiatsu, Renji could sense the kidou contained in the collar. It was a restraint - delicate to look at, probably fatal to fight against.

“An’ Renji-kun’s right, Shuu-kun,” Gin added, batting his eyes - eyes that he hadn’t held shut since the war ended - at the pair. “ ‘m harmless as a declawed kitten. No reiatsu, mm? An’ no Shinsou, either.”

“Where is everybody, Gin?” Renji interrupted, not wanting to involve himself - or worse, Shuuhei - in any of Gin’s psychological games. Even without his former powers, the man could still talk you into believing black was white and white was purple polka-dots, and Shuuhei had far more issues stemming from the betrayal than Renji did.

“Mm, Tessai an’ the brats are out shoppin’, an’ Kisuke’s down below with Ichi-kun. He said yer free to go down as soon as yer settled in.”

“Right, thanks,” Renji answered calmly, and strode past the man with a nod, his firm grip on Shuuhei’s wrist leaving the other Lieutenant little choice but to follow in his wake. 

___________________________________

“How the hell do they expect us to sleep under the same roof as that psychopath?” Shuuhei hissed, as soon as they’d gotten into the hallway. 

Renji just shrugged in response. “He keeps to himself, for the most part. And while you’re right, and he’s not harmless, he’s not dangerous, either. You saw the restraint collar he’s wearing. I’m sure Urahara’s got it bound into his brain waves or something, ready to liquify his brain if he thinks about violence.”

Biting back several comments on whether Gin’s brain actually required liquefaction, Shuuhei settled on saying, “I don’t trust him.”

“Neither do I,” Renji answered with a shrug, rolling the door to the guest room open and pitching his bag inside. “But when I was in the Eleventh, I could never trust that the guy sittin’ next to me at meals wasn’t gonna try to take my head off ‘cause he wanted my Seat. Just the way things are. I’m never gonna trust Gin, sure. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna waste energy on staying mad at him when we’ve got other things to worry about. He’s being punished; let it go, Shuuhei.”

Grimacing, the other Lieutenant merely followed Renji’s example in pitching his pack through the door and remained silent. They made their way back to the front of the store in silence, where Gin lifted the cover off the hidden ladder for them with no more than an “All set?”

Renji gave the former Captain a polite nod as he slipped into the hole; Shuuhei stared across the gap at him for a moment before silently following Renji down.

They’d gotten about halfway down the ladder when the shockwave struck. 

Cursing, Renji clung to the metal rungs as the waves of reiatsu-laden wind tore past them, the scorching heat of the blast making the ladder unbearably hot beneath his hands. Glancing upward, he caught Shuuhei’s gaze and nodded, once. 

Drawing their Zanpakutou, both men released their grips on the ladder and plunged.

________________________________

“I told you not to teach him the incantation.”

“It wouldn’t have _worked_ without the incantation!” 

A delicately stifled cough was the only response. Kisuke Urahara opened his mouth to respond again, eating a fair amount of dust in the process, when two identical _pats_ drew his attention to the base of the ladder, where Renji and Shuuhei landed, crouched, weapons drawn, both searching for the danger.

_________________________________

“What the hell...?”

Glancing around, Renji tried to absorb what he was seeing. The immense training room under the shop had seen a lot of abuse in its day, not the least of which had been sustained by Renji’s use of Bankai to train Chad, shortly before the War. 

The damage it had taken from Hihiou Zabimaru was nothing compared to this. 

A crater spanning at least a hundred feet across had dug itself into the rocky ground. Black scorch marks decorated the rocks lay scattered around the circle, clearly having been blasted from their previous positions by whatever force had created the earlier shockwave.

Standing well off to the side of the damaged circle were Urahara and a lean man that Renji vaguely recognized. It took him a moment before the ragged, flame-like hem of the second man’s coat - so similar to Ichigo’s shihakusho in Bankai - clicked in his memory.

“Oy, Zangetsu,” Renji called, smiling. “Long time no see.”

And for a while, he, and the rest of the Gotei, had thought they might never see Zangetsu, in any form, ever again. The final battle in the War against Aizen - the final strike that Ichigo had used to bring the madman down - had come at a cost. 

A year trapped, powerless and blind to spirits, his Shinigami powers burned out, leaving the hero of the Winter War as nothing more than an ordinary human.

“Renji,” the Zanpakutou spirit nodded back, but anything else he might have said was interrupted by a yell from the center of the crater. There was a tingling burst of reiatsu that indicated shunpou, and Ichigo landed next to his mentor and his Zanpakutou, muttering curses and wiping soot from his face.

_“I told you it wouldn’t fucking work!”_ the young man roared at Urahara, who blinked back at him from behind his fan, unperturbed. 

“And _I_ told _you_ to regulate your reiatsu. If you can’t do something that simple, it’s no great surprise it blew up in your face, now, is it?”

“Maybe if you’d actually try _teaching_ me instead of throwing me into all this shit headfirst -”

“Ichigo, the only way people like you learn anything _is_ by being thrown in headfirst.”

“ ‘People like me’? What the hell are you implying?!”

“...the hell?” Shuuhei muttered suddenly, and Renji turned his attention away from the furious Substitute, back to his old senpai.

“What is it?”

“That blast pattern - I recognize it. It’s Shakkahou.” 

“What? There’s no way...” Staring into the crater, Renji felt the not-unfamiliar sensation of disbelief sweep over him. Shakkahou was only a thirties-level kidou, barely a third of the way up the power scale. There was no way in hell it should have been able to cause this kind of damage.

Then again, this was Ichigo they were dealing with. He’d turned every preconception the Seireitei ever had on its ear, so why not turn Shakkahou into the kind of destructive force that usually only kidou in the nineties could hope to be?

“That kid...” Shuuhei muttered, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.” 

______________________________

“And your training is done for the day, go, practice on your own. Though I would advise having Inoue-san present to undo any damage you case.” Beaming madly, Urahara calmly grabbed a fistful of Ichigo’s kosode and quite literally threw him to the ladder, ignoring the stream of shouted curses that trailed the teen’s flight.

“And you,” Urahara added wearily, turning to Zangetsu, “ _please_ keep trying to help him regulate and refine his flow of reiatsu.”

“Even I can only do so much, Kisuke,” the spirit answered dryly, and dissolved into nothingness before Urahara could reply, re-materializing in sword form on Ichigo’s back as the young man bounded up the ladder to the shop, still making his feelings on the matter abundantly clear. Even Renji raised an eyebrow; some of Ichigo’s vocabulary wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the Eleventh.

When Ichigo and his rant finally vanished through the false sky, Urahara turned his gaze on the two Shinigami lieutenants standing nearby, his smile growing to genuinely alarming proportions “So-oo, Hisagi-san. I understand you need to achieve Bankai.”

_____*_____*______*_____*_____*____

“Ah, Byakuya-kun! Thank you so much for agreeing to come.”

“I would hardly refuse your invitation, Ukitake, though I admit I am curious as to the occasion.” Seating himself calmly at the table, the young captain surveyed the bounty of food spread over it with a wary eye. All of his favorite dishes were there, even his peculiar favorite of curried bananas. “And exactly what you are attempting to bribe me for.”

“I’m not allowed to indulge a friend? After all, you would hardly appreciate me offering you chocolate.”

Byakuya refrained from pointing out that Hitsugaya rarely appreciated the chocolates either, and occupied himself with making selections from a few of the dishes. The food was quite excellent, he realized, and subsequently found himself enjoying the best lunch he’d had in quite some time. Hurriedly-grabbed take-out, eaten only just slowly enough that it didn’t overturn on the paperwork, was no substitute for a good, well-prepared meal.

Ukitake, politely ignoring Byakuya’s unsubtle hints to get on with asking whatever he wanted to ask, made small talk about the weather, his books and flowers, and the health of Byakuya’s koi carp throughout the meal, until the young noble had devoured the last bit of spicy banana and the actual topic of conversation could be put off no longer.

“I asked you here today because I wish to speak to you about Rukia.”

Dark eyebrows flashed upwards. “Has something happened -”

“Oh, it’s nothing to be concerned about! As you are well aware, however, when Rukia graduated the Shinigami Academy, the only reason I did not place her as a seated officer within this squad was the letter you had sent to me, requesting she be kept out of such a position.” Folding his hands, Ukitake leaned forward across the table, his dark eyes intent on Byakuya’s icy ones. “I would like you to reconsider.”

The younger noble did not answer immediately, electing instead to slowly finish the cup of tea in his hand, setting the empty vessel carefully back on the table before asking, “Is there a particular reason you are making this request now?”

Ukitake sighed softly. “It’s been over forty years since Kaien’s death, and the Thirteenth has been without a lieutenant for far too long. Neither Kotetsu nor Kotsubaki have the potential to rise to Lieutenant status anytime within this century, nor could I, in good conscience, promote only one of them if they did. The events of the War showed me, very clearly, that I cannot allow this division to continue without a full and proper command structure. Should anything happen to me, there must be another who can take my command.”

“And you believe,” Byakuya said slowly, reading the very clear subtext that Ukitake had laid out for him, “that Rukia would be willing to take over the position of the man she idolized - the man she killed?”

“The Hollow had already killed him; Rukia merely put him out of his misery,” Ukitake responded calmly. “That aside, if it’s presented correctly, yes. What she endured in Hueco Mundo helped give her peace of mind about the actions I forced her to take on the night of Kaien’s death.”

“I see.”

“Truth be told, Byakuya-kun,” the older captain said, leaning back and favoring the other with a stern expression, “ever since Kaien’s death, I have been waiting for Rukia to achieve an acceptable level of maturity and stability, both with her emotions and her powers, to take lieutenant’s position. I believe she has finally done both, something that you would be aware of if you spent more time looking at Rukia, and less at Hisana’s ghost.”

Had that statement been uttered by anyone else, they barely would have closed their lips on the last syllable of his late wife’s name before their blood had decorated the walls. As it was, Byakuya’s reiatsu spiked furiously, a razor-edged, arctic chill, before he reasserted control of himself.

“Ukitake, that statement -”

“Is entirely correct, and you know it.” Sighing, the other man leaned forward again, planting his elbows on his knees and fixing Byakuya with a penetrating stare. “Tell me, what is Rukia’s favorite color? Favorite foods? What kind of music does she listen to? Do you know the answer to any of those questions, Byakuya?”

Both of them knew full well he did not; instead of answering, Byakuya lowered his gaze, refusing to meet the disapproval in Ukitake’s eyes.

“They are, incidentally, lavender, rice dumplings and eggs, and although she listens to classical music to please you, she is quite fond of a human-realm Japanese rock artist named Gackt.”

“....I see.”

“It is a rather sad state of affairs when your sister’s captain knows her better than you do, Byakuya. I trust you will rectify it.”

“I will... make an attempt to do so.”

“Good. And as to her promotion...?”

Sighing, Byakuya dropped his gaze back to the tabletop. “I dare not lose her as well, Ukitake. However... I do her no favors by denying her strength.”

A broad smile of approval lit up Ukitake’s face.


	4. Learning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings for this chapter. For those of you wanting to see Hisagi and Renji's training, we'll get back to that in Chapter 5. (You're welcome to view it on my FFN account in the meantime)

When he’d received the summons from the First Division, Kira Izuru had been terrified. 

He was pleased that it hadn’t shown on his face, not while he was in the Third’s barracks, anyway. Serving under Gin for as long as he had gave one a poker face to rival Captain Kuchiki’s. 

By the time he actually got to the towering doors of the First, however, his fear had begun to overcome his well-trained ability to hide it, and he found his hands shaking as he pressed them against the door.

Sasikabe met him two steps in, glanced at him for a split second, and shook his head slightly. Leaning forward, he patted Kira gently on the shoulder and whispered conspiratorially in his ear, “Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble,” before drifting off again to do whatever it was he was in the middle of doing.

Which was all very well and good, but if he wasn’t in trouble, what in the world was he doing here??

Kira didn’t find out the answer to that until almost an hour later; either some sort of emergency had come up - which he doubted, most likely it would have been noticeable - or it merely amused Yamamoto-soutaichou to keep his subordinates waiting.

And so, bent in a painful bow with his forehead pressed against the polished wood, Kira waited with no small amount of lingering fear to hear why Genryuusei Yamamoto had summoned him.

“Good grief, child. Stop bowing, I can’t give orders to the back of your head.”

Hardly true, but Kira’s back and elbows were already protesting the position; he readjusted his position into a careful seiza instead, resting his hands on his thighs and keeping his gaze properly downcast. “How may I serve you, Yamamoto-soutaichou?”

“You are among the most proficient of kidou users in the ranking officers of the Gotei 13, is that correct?”

Startled, Kira mouthed silently for a moment before managing to stammer out a bewildered, “Yes... sir?”

“And you are acquainted with the Substitute Shinigami Kurosaki Ichigo?” 

“Yes, sir,” Kira replied, more firmly this time. It was harder not to know Ichigo. He hadn’t had the same amount of time to interact with the young Vizored as, say, Hisagi or Matsumoto, but they had a nodding acquaintance at least. 

“Would you consider yourself an adequate teacher in the art of kidou?”

Was this line of questioning going somewhere?? “I... ranked top in my classes at the Academy in learning and performing kidou, soutaichou. I have not attempted to formally teach it.”

“Well answered. Lieutenant Kira, as of today, you are being given a secondary assignment. Any duties you cannot fulfill in the management of Squad Three will be taken over by First Division Third Seat Aodawa. Report to the Senkaimon in one hour. Captain Ukitake will give you the details of your assignment then.”

_________________________________________________________________________

Kira managed to waste the next twenty-two minutes pacing, reorganizing his paperwork, and attempting not to think. However, the harder he tried not to think, the harder he wound up thinking, until he finally threw down the small, sand-filled rubber ball he’d been toying with (“It’s a stress-management device from the world of the Living, see? You squeeze it and it helps relax you!”), because no matter what Matsumoto said about this ridiculous human invention, it wasn’t helping him; and headed out of his office. 

“Kira-fukutaichou?” Aodawa asked, mildly confused, as the blond lieutenant went by.

“Going to see Ukitake,” came the terse response, and Kira was gone in a burst of shunpou. 

Chuckling to himself, Aodawa scribbled a note on a piece of paper near at hand; _‘Displays moderate patience; twenty-three minutes elapsed before break.’_

________________________________________________________________________

 

Ukitake’s fifth seat met Kira at the gate to the Thirteenth’s barracks. “He’s been expecting you,” she said simply, and conducted Kira through the elegant muddle of buildings to Ukitake’s office, knocked once to announce him, and took her leave.

Ukitake’s low voice called out almost immediately for Kira to come in, and he did so with no little trepidation.

“I was expecting you earlier,” the captain smiled at him, setting aside the book he’d been in the middle of reading. “Would you care for tea?”

Briefly, Kira wondered if this man had ever been anything less than a paragon of polite behavior, then decided that the day Ukitake wasn’t polite would probably signal the last Apocalypse. “Thank you, yes,” he replied, settling himself on a cushion in front of the man’s desk. “I was hoping you could tell me -”

“About your assignment, yes,” Ukitake interrupted smoothly, handing him a steaming cup. “I expect you’re in a fine set of knots worrying about it!”

Kira accepted the tea and nodded mutely. A ‘fine set of knots’ was a pretty good description of his intestines right now.

“It’s not much to worry about, actually. You were selected because of your high proficiency with kidou - you and Hinamori are the most talented users of it in your age group, outside of Byakuya-kun, but his personality isn’t exactly suited to the task at hand.”

And Hinamori was still recovering from the emotional breakdown she’d suffered when she witnessed Aizen’s death, which rather ruled her out. She was barely handling paperwork at this point; anything involving teaching kidou was probably beyond her.

“May I ask, sir, what exactly is the ‘task at hand’?”

“Sensei didn’t tell you, then?”

“No, sir. He didn’t tell me anything, actually, just asked questions.”

“Ah,” the silver-haired Captain sighed, shaking his head minutely. “Well, in that case, I’ll start at the beginning. It was decided that, in the interest of promoting equal standards and good relation and such, that Kurosaki Ichigo is to be educated in the finer of the Shinigami arts if he is to continue as an auxiliary Shinigami again, including tradition, deportment, and particularly kidou.”

Oh.

“They want me to teach Kurosaki kidou?” Kira realized that his voice had struck a painfully sharp pitch, and took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to shout. But... me, teach _Kurosaki?_ ”

“With the return of his powers, Ichigo's education has become a somewhat pressing matter. You are one of the very few ranking officers with the right skill level and personality to take on his instruction,” Ukitake replied calmly, taking a sip of his own tea. “Soifon and Byakuya are both exceptional kidou-users, but their... particular attitudes towards Ichigo would make teaching him very difficult, ditto Toushirou-kun. Hinamori is regrettably incapacitated, and the senior captains cannot be spared at the time being. You are, essentially, our first, last and only real choice.”

Feeling mildly overwhelmed, Kira sat back, staring down into the teacup still in his hands as though he could read answers in the murky liquid. He knew he didn’t have much choice in the matter, regardless of how he felt about it, but, when he reached beyond the bewildered shock, he found something that felt like... pride? 

The sensation was so unfamiliar that he almost didn’t recognize it at first. He was pleased that they found him worthy of this assignment, happy to be entrusted with something so important.

It meant he was finally starting to break the chains that Ichimaru had left on him.

“Very well,” he said, his voice so clear and calm that it startled him at first. “I accept the assignment.”

“Excellent,” Ukitake smiled, setting his cup back on the polished tray. “In that case, I suggest we go and meet your new student at the Senkaimon, Kira-sensei.”

A weak laugh - something else unfamiliar, after so many long years - struggled its way out of Kira’s throat as he returned the captain’s smile. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

They arrived at the Senkaimon with a few minutes to spare; minutes which Kira spent shuffling his feet nervously, wishing he wasn’t too disciplined to pace, and Ukitake spent sitting serenely on a flat rock, Sogyo no Kotowari settled across his crossed legs, in a light meditation.

The Gates appeared with a clatter and a rush of reiatsu, opening with their usual blinding light to spill out a characteristically scowling Ichigo and a blur of black and orange, which touched down for a split-second and vanished in a puff of dust.

“I take it,” Ukitake remarked, quite unruffled, as he glanced after the now-vanished blur, “that Yoruichi-san is here for a visit?”

“Aa.” Shrugging his pack into a more comfortable position on his shoulder, Ichigo gave the captain a brief but polite nod. “How’ve you been, Ukitake?”

“Oh, well enough, thank you. I trust you remember Squad Three Lieutenant Kira Izuru?”

“Oh... yeah. Hey, Kira.”

Kira nodded back, feeling awkward. The thought of teaching Ichigo kidou had been fine in the abstract, but faced with the reality; the intense, burning heat of Ichigo’s reiatsu, still uncontrolled, with that eerie, cold undertone that his Hollow gave it.... he was beginning to have serious doubts. Until, at least, Ichigo threw him a lopsided, apologetic little half-smile.

“You’re the one stuck teaching me kidou, huh? What’d you do to deserve it?”

“Apparently it’s the price of being the best,” Kira answered dryly, and was surprised when Ichigo barked a short laugh in response. It improved the young man’s appearance dramatically, not having those frown lines etched into his forehead.

_‘Makes him look like Shiba-san,’_ came the unbidden thought, and Kira glanced sideways at Ukitake, just fast enough to catch a lingering sadness in the man’s eyes. It didn’t last, though; within a second, Ukitake was up, smiling cheerfully, recommending a training spot for them and inviting Ichigo along to dinner afterwards, yes, of course Kira could come along! And here, why didn’t they take some chocolates out with them in case they needed a snack?

Kira accepted the chocolates, more for politenesses sake than anything else, and quickly excused them before Ukitake could suggest anything else. They made good use of Shunpou in leaving the Seireitei, heading outside of western Rukongai to one of the abandoned training fields. 

The one they eventually wound up at was actually one of Shuuhei’s favorites - a jagged, rough-edged little cliff overlooking a rocky waste. Nothing out here to kill or injure, only plenty of boulders, dead trees, and lifeless dirt. 

When they were much younger, it hadn’t been uncommon for Kira to find Shuuhei out here at obscene hours of the night, dancing in the air while Kazeshini’s blades spun around him. He would sit back here on the cliff, listening to the angry music of the chains, watching Shuuhei train until he was exhausted, at which point Kira would silently join him, patch up any wounds Shuuhei had managed to inflict on himself, and offer him a onigiri or two. 

When they had eaten, they would walk back to Seireitei together, often in silence, occasionally discussing whatever came to mind. Kira would return to his squad; the Fourth, at first, before Ichimaru came along and claimed him, while Shuuhei would head off to the Ninth. 

They’d stopped meeting for Shuuhei’s training years ago, though; after Kira was promoted, his duties to Ichimaru ate up more and more of his time and energy. Until now, he hadn’t realized how much he missed those nights.

Running a hand gently over the rock he’d always sat on, Kira felt another faint smile trace its way over his lips. Maybe he could make some time once Hisagi returned from the Living World to come out and watch his practices again.

“Here?” Ichigo’s voice broke his reverie, and Kira glanced up at him, nodding.

“Yes, this is fine. We’re well away from any civilians, and I can set up a good shield.”

“All right then.” Nodding slightly, Ichigo reached behind him, wrapping one hand around the cloth-wrapped hilt of his Zanpakutou. Drawing the immense blade from his back, he planted it point-down in the rocky soil. 

Before Kira could question what in the world he was doing - he wasn’t at a stage where he could combine his Zanpakutou with kidou - Ichigo settled both hands against the hilt and channeled a massive burst of reiatsu through the blade. 

When the dust cleared, there was a second figure standing beside Ichigo; a tall, thin man with wild brown hair, the tattered hem of his velvet jacket swirling in a nonexistent wind. 

Ichigo coughed once, waving away the billowing dust. “Kira, this is Zangetsu. He’s gonna try to help me control my reiatsu, so that I don’t blow us all up by mistake.” Dropping his gaze, Ichigo added in a low mumble, “My control hasn’t been that great since I got my powers back.”

Kira gaped in wordless astonishment. This was... Zangetsu? Ichigo’s Zanpakutou? 

Honey-colored eyes sought Kira from behind shaded lenses. “You wield Wabisuke, correct?” The deep voice had an odd echo to it, something just a little bit otherworldly, and the spirit’s face was impassive.

“Hai... Zangetsu-san,” Kira managed, trying not to stutter. Much to his surprise, the spirit nodded with obvious approval.

“This should work well.” And with no more than that, he settled himself cross-legged on the ground and dropped instantly into meditation. 

“Is... he.... is he always like that?” Kira stammered, looking back and forth between Ichigo and Zangetsu in astonishment. Ignorant as he was of Shinigami custom, Ichigo wouldn’t be aware of how... _intimate_ it was for one Shinigami to see the spirit of another’s Zanpakutou. 

“Eh, Zangetsu-ossan? Pretty much, yeah. Just be glad I don’t need Shirosaki to help me out, too.”

“Shiro... who?”

“My Hollow.”

The icy undertone of Ichigo’s reiatsu pulsed at the words, as though the Hollow was listening to their conversation, and Kira grimaced, fighting down a shudder. Ichigo’s Hollow was the _last_ thing he wanted to consider when he was already nervous about this little venture of theirs. “Let’s get started, shall we? We’ll begin with Hadou. The first spell is Shou...”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

“So, Bya-bo, how’s things with the family?”

Byakuya heaved a sigh. He was up to his elbows in paperwork without Renji here, still trying to think a way out of his clan elder’s ultimatum, and now had Yoruichi to deal with on top of everything else. No wonder he was developing a migraine.

“Much the same as when you left,” he replied evenly, working his way steadily over the paper in front of him. He’d done thirty of these same forms over the last week; at this rate, he was well on his way to having the cursed thing memorized. “Which begs the question, why are you here again?”

“No reason. Had a note to drop of to Yamamoto is all, and I figured I would check in on you.”

“I am sure that eventually you will comprehend I neither need nor wish to be ‘checked in on’ by you, Yoruichi.”

“Mm-hm. Not today, though! Thought you might be interested to know that Renji’s doing well, by the way.” Sitting down on the edge of the aforementioned lieutenant’s desk, Yoruichi stretched out her legs, arching her back in a move designed to provoke. All it accomplished was Byakuya trying harder to ignore her.

“He and Hisagi have been working up quite a sweat every day, training. I joined them in the hot spring the other day, and I must say I was quite amazed...”

Byakuya’s brush paused on the paper. Bingo!

“...at just how far down those tattoos go.”

The elegant hand tightened for a moment, ever-so-slightly, around the polished wooden shaft of the brush, the knuckles paling. Then the moment was over, his composure resumed, and the brush returned to its steady motion.

“Really, he has the most amazing body...”

The knuckles paled, again, and a small drop of ink blotted the paper when he twitched. 

“I’m surprised you haven’t noticed it, really. I mean, you’re in this confined area with him for so many hours a day.... You train with him, too, and I know Senbonzakura is murder on clothes...”

“Yoruichi...” 

Ah, _there_ was that dangerous voice. That the-icy-depths-of-hell-will-receive-your-shredded-soul voice that Byakuya could pull off like nobody else. 

“You mean to tell me you haven’t seen him naked, even once? What a shame! It would certainly improve your temper, just looking at that bit of muscled art. There’s one particular appendage that I think would do you a great deal of good -”

_“Yoruichi!”_

She leapt off the desk with a hysterical giggle, pausing just long enough to make sure he was following before shooting out the door. Byakuya hadn’t roared like that in a _century_! Obviously she’d struck a deeper nerve than she realized. Still, that just made the chase more fun!

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

He shouldn’t have risen to the bait. He knew that. It was stupid, immature, emotional, all of those things that a nobleman and a captain wasn’t supposed to be. 

However, the problem was, he had. Which meant Yoruichi had obviously struck a nerve with her taunts about Renji. 

Even as he leapt across the roofs of Seireitei in hot pursuit of his childhood nemesis and oldest friend, Byakuya Kuchiki couldn’t help wondering exactly what it was about Renji Abarai that got so under his skin.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

“Ah-CHOO!” 

Beaten bloody as he was, Shuuhei couldn’t help but laugh as Renji sneezed so hard he stumbled, nearly tripping over Hihio Zabimaru’s twining coils. The head of the Zanpakutou twisted slightly, turning back to look at its master with an incongruous expression of concern somehow apparent on the skull-like face.

“I dunno who you pissed off, Renji, but remind me to thank them,” Shuuhei grinned, sweeping Kazeshini down at his training partner, taking advantage of his moment of distraction. 

Zabimaru blocked the attack, of course, but it put Renji off-balance for a second longer.  
 “Dammit,” the redhead muttered, swinging the hilt in his hand to send his Bankai screaming after his friend, “why do things like that never happen to Kuchiki-taichou?”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Back in the Seireitei, Byakuya was a half-inch from catching ahold of Yoruichi’s sash and effectively winning their little game of tag when he sneezed.

Laughing, Yoruichi slipped away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * A/N: (snickers) For those of you not aware, it’s often believed in Japan that if you sneeze for no reason, it means someone is talking about you behind your back. Byakuya is largely immune to this phenomenon, being noble, but Renji is, as always, the exception to the rule.


	5. Breaking Point - Shuuhei

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: slightly less than canon-typical level of violence and injury, some profanity, basically nothing shocking if you’ve been in the fandom longer than five minutes, ;-).

Hisagi Shuuhei collapsed to the ground, his body aching with the dull, numbing pain of reiatsu depletion. Kazeshini lay on the rocks beside him, one of the scythe-blades snapped, the chain tangled.

A hundred feet away, Renji was still on his feet, if barely. There was a bone-deep wound across his forehead that had missed taking out his left eye by a quarter of an inch, coating the entire side of his face in blood. Similar wounds, all serious, decorated his left thigh, right side, the center of his chest, and his left shoulder halfway to the elbow. Hihio Zabimaru was still twining itself sinuously around its master, hissing restlessly at Shuuhei. For a split-second, Shuuhei thought he heard an unfamiliar voice, not Kazeshini’s but with the same resonance, growling at the back of his mind, but it vanished before he could make out any words.

As if in response to it, though, Renji banished his Bankai with a short jerk of the hilt, re-sheathing his sealed blade in a practiced movement. 

“You’re done for the day, senpai.”

Sad, but true. Hisagi could feel the dull ache of bruised, possibly broken bones, along his left side, blood flowing from the dozens of wounds on his body - not to mention the throbbing headache that always seemed to accompany him using his Zanpakutou for extended periods. 

“Can you walk to the spring?”

“Not much choice,” Hisagi answered, wearily. His breathing was strained; had he broken ribs, when Zabimaru’s head slammed into him a few hours ago? “If I can’t, you’ll make me crawl.”

“Damn right,” Renji answered, limping slowly forward. The crimson-haired lieutenant wasn’t above using Zabimaru as a crutch, Hisagi noticed, and felt just a tiny bit better. Obviously that hit on Renji’s leg had gone deeper than he’d realized. Reaching out with one hand, he found the handle of one of Kazeshini’s scythe-blades and dispelled his shikai with a thought. He managed to sit up enough to re-sheath the blade before Renji made it to his side.

“On your feet, senpai,” came the weary half-chuckle, and Shuuhei found himself getting dragged upwards by a merciless fist tangled in the back of his kosode. He grabbed Renji’s shoulder for support, trying to avoid the deep gash he’d put in it and grimacing when the other man hissed anyway. 

Leaning awkwardly on each other, the pair managed to stumble their way to the healing hot springs tucked into a secluded ‘corner’ of the vast training room. Neither one had the energy or the care to remove what was left of their shihakusho before stumbling into the water, and Renji stopped only long enough to remove his waraji and tabi socks before wading in. Shuuhei, who had been fighting barefoot, didn’t need to bother. 

They sat in silence, Renji half-dozing as the water around him slowly filtered from crimson back to clear, thanks to some mysterious cleaning process that the pool performed on itself, while Shuuhei watched to make sure the other man didn’t pass out from blood loss and drown.

“What’re you so depressed about, Hisagi?” Renji mumbled after a half-hour or so, and Shuuhei jumped. The redhead’s eyes were still closed, and he gave every appearance of being asleep. 

“How did you -”

“Work with Kuchiki-taichou, remember? Y’get pretty used to readin’ people’s emotions from their reiatsu.”

“ _What_ reiatsu?” Hisagi snorted. He was drained, to the point that he was considering popping one of those damn pills the Fourth Division was so damn fond of. 

“Y’got enough,” Renji answered, his voice still bleary from his half-asleep state. “So, whassa matter?”

“I’m not making progress,” Shuuhei answered, glaring at Kazeshini, where the blade rested on a conveniently designed rock at the side of the pool. It was hardly his Zanpakutou’s fault, of course, but he needed to be angry at something, and he was already mad at himself. He’d already been here three weeks, he’d been taking blows from Renji’s massive Bankai for three weeks, dodging Ichimaru’s currently-blue eyes and Urahara’s snide comments for _three fucking weeks_ , and so far he had nothing to show for it. Aside from the fact he was getting better at dodging, for all the good _that_ was doing.

The only reprieve he got - if you could call it a reprieve - was when he and Renji went out into Karakura to wrestle with the few Hollows that were still appearing there. And half of the time, the Hollows had already been defeated by the time they arrived at the site. Occasionally, it was by Uryuu or Chad, who stopped long enough to exchange a few words before moving on again. Once, it had been that silver-haired Quincy, who had sniffed disdainfully at their appearance and vanished before they could say anything.

Most often, however, they arrived to find a lingering flavor of a Shinigami’s reiatsu on the air; one they didn’t recognize, and captain-strength. When they commented to Urahara that there was obviously a rouge or exiled Gotei captain running around Karakura, the man had laughed and waved it off, telling them not to worry. 

Nowhere had they seen Ichigo, who seemed to have vanished off the face of the Human plane after they’d bumped into him here, three weeks ago. When asked about that, Urahara had only replied that Ichigo was off training, although he declined to elaborate on where, simply suggesting that Renji and Hisagi get back to their own training.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Shuuhei shifted, and something crackled in his side that definitely should not have. Apparently he wasn’t getting as good at dodging as he’d thought. 

“Tried talkin’ to him?” Renji asked, nodding vaguely in the direction of the two Zanpakutou, his eyes still closed.

“Kazeshini’s not much of a conversationalist. Unlike you and Kuchiki-taichou, not all of us have our Zanpakutou around for tea every weekend.”

“Dun’ need t' be snippy about it,” Renji answered, lifting his head and blinking his eyes open. His hair was still wet and clinging to his face, since the first thing he’d done when he’d gotten in was duck his head under the water to heal the gash on his forehead. “Especially since whenever Zabimaru shows up, it’s t' call me names and smack me around until I do what he wants. They. Whatever. ‘M just sayin’, it wouldn’t hurt for you to try talking to him. It makes it easier.”

“For you, maybe,” Hisagi growled, and Renji let the subject drop. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Hisagi didn’t like his Zanpakutou. Kira thought it was depressing, Matsumoto thought it was silly, and Rukia, when asked, thought that Hisagi needed therapy. Which was probably true. Being around Tousen and his constant refrain of ‘Justice!’ for as long as Shuuhei had was probably enough to drive anyone ‘round the twist.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Still no progress, Hisagi-san?” Urahara asked mildly, two hours later, as he served out dinner to the motley group surrounding the dinner table. Ginta snorted in something like contempt, Ururu made a soft noise of sympathy, and Tessai thumped Ginta in the head sharply enough that the boy’s yells almost covered Gin’s snickering. 

Hisagi only growled in response, devouring the rice in front of him with single-minded determination in an attempt to ignore the rest of his dinner companions.

“Typical. We not only get a buncha useless freeloaders, we wind up with _weak_ useless freeloaders,” snarled Ginta, and Tessai smacked him on the head again.

“Aww, ain’t Shuu-kun’s fault he’s broken,” Gin cooed, waving his chopsticks under the boy’s nose. Ginta swatted them away.

“Whaddya mean, not his fault? ‘Course it’s his fault he’s weak!”

“Ain’t,” Gin answered, wiping Ginta-cooties off on his sleeve before digging back into his dinner. 

“If you have something to say, Ichimaru, say it,” Shuuhei snapped, before Ginta could say anything more. 

“ ‘m just sayin’ that yer exactly what Tousen wanted ya t’ be.”

Everyone at the table froze. Gin rarely spoke of Aizen, willingly or otherwise - for all that he’d followed the other man, there had been no love lost between them - but his contentious relationship with the former Captain of the Ninth was apparently quite open for discussion. 

There was a splintering _crack_ , and Shuuhei’s chopsticks dropped to the table in pieces. Very slowly, Hisagi pushed himself to his feet and strode around the table to where Gin was sitting, fisted both hands in the front of the man’s yukata, and dragged him upwards. Nose-to-nose with the former captain, he very slowly ground out the words _“What did you say?”_

“I said, yer exactly what Tousen wanted ya to be. Divided. Afraid a’ yer own power. Yer broken, Shuu-kun. Jus’ like he wan’ed. He put aaaaall those doubts in yer head, din’ he? Made ya’ afraid, so ya wouldn’t be able ta stand up fer what was right, just what he’d taught ya. An’ guess what? It worked.”

The room hung in dead silence for a moment before Shuuhei slammed the taller man against the wall and pinned him there with one hand around the pale throat, his free hand clenching into a fist. Gin, drawing a badly-strained breath, merely stared complacently down at him through slitted eyes. 

When the movement came, it was too fast to follow, just a blur of speed and a shattering crunch as Shuuhei’s fist impacted. 

Silently, he released his hold on Gin’s throat, allowing the other man to crumple to the floor. Turning back to the still-silent table, he bowed carefully to Urahara as he spoke. “I need to go clear my head, Urahara-san. Please excuse me.” Without another word, he turned and left.

Still sitting where Hisagi had dropped him, Gin stared after the lieutenant in bewilderment. The wooden frame of the wall had been reduced to splinters where Shuuhei’s fist had struck it, half an inch from Gin’s ear. 

___________________________________________________________

Two hours later, Hisagi lay sprawled across the length of a park bench, one hand tucked under his head and one knee drawn up as he stared at the star-scattered sky. The lights from the town interfered with the view a little, but it was quiet and still, and that should have been enough.

Except it wasn’t. His mind had been racing ever since he’d left the shop, one part screaming at him that Gin was a lying bastard that couldn’t be trusted, another part - the part that sounded more like Shuuhei normally did - quietly and logically asserting that, lying bastard or not, Gin was right and had a valid point. Unfortunately. 

Tousen _had_ planted doubts in his subordinates’ minds. And for all his talk of taking the peaceful, bloodless path, the man had been only too willing to help initiate a war, cut down his former comrades, and allow himself to be turned into a monster. It was hard to guess now how much of what he’d taught Shuuhei had been a lie. Had Tousen been trying to deceive him all along, or had Tousen merely been deceiving himself?

“You’re gonna bring a pack of Hollows down on your head if you keep leaking reiatsu like that, kid.”

Shuuhei sat up, startled. He hadn’t heard or sensed the man’s approach, which was embarrassing, particularly considering how attuned he was to that particular reiatsu. 

“Muguruma-taichou!” 

Snorting, the Visored walked to him, combat boots heavy on the grass. “Don’t call me that, kid. Muguruma-taichou’s been dead for a century.”

“Ah, sorry... Muguruma-san?”

“Kensei.”

“Sorry, Kensei-san.”

A gusty sigh. “You’re hopeless. So what are you doing out here, besides acting like Hollow bait?”

Shuuhei grimaced. “I’m out here because I _am_ hopeless.”

Kensei only stared at him in response - a far cry from the captain of a century before, who would have shouted at him to just _man up and deal with it_. It was hard to decide which one was worse. Shuuhei stared up at the older man, feeling a flicker of desperation born somewhere in the mating of his own lack of progress and the silent disapproval in Kensei’s eerie golden eyes.

“Why won’t you come back to the Soul Society?” Shuuhei found himself asking suddenly. “You could take back the Ninth -”

“No.”

That single, flat denial stopped Shuuhei’s thoughts in their tracks. How was it that one word could carry so much within it? Shaking his head, Kensei walked strode forward and dropped down on the bench, nearly sitting on Shuuhei’s toes, and slumped forward, glaring at the grass.

“No, we won’t go back, kid. Whole damn Seireitei’s nothing better than a stew pot of lies and hypocrisy. And they’d all bow and scrape and call us ‘sama’ and ‘taichou’ again, but behind that, they’d all be thinking of us as monsters.”

“But you’re not -”

Snorting, Kensei drew one hand down in front of his face, miming the gesture he used to call his Hollow mask. “We’re not a part of their neat little rules, you know that. And whatever kind of welcome we might get if we went back, it’d all be lies. You know that as well as I do. So, spit it out. What’s the problem?”

“I can’t reach Bankai,” Shuuhei blurted, abruptly, and winced. “They want to promote me to Captain of the Ninth, but I can’t reach Bankai.”

“Well, congratulations, idiot,” Kensei shot back, and Shuuhei blinked, startled. “With that attitude, it’s no wonder. You spent too much time listening to Kaname. Try listening to Ichigo instead; cut the oh-I-can’t crap and just _do_ it.”

“But I -” Shuuhei began, and bit off the automatic denial, then stopped and shook his head, smiling faintly.

“What’s funny?”

“Ichimaru said pretty much the same thing to me, back at the shop.”

“Hn. Well, Ichimaru’s a sick little freak, always has been, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid.”

“I realize that, it’s just... he said that I was ‘exactly what Tousen wanted me to be. And I don’t want to believe that everything he taught me was for the pure purpose of making me easier to betray.”

“Probably wasn’t. Tousen’s a damn fool, always was. Dunno if it’s because he’s blind, but his philosophy is backwards. Fear doesn’t make you a good warrior; if you’re afraid of your weapon, you’ve got no business handling it. Respect it, hell, yes. But don’t ever be afraid of your Zanpakutou.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“You would think so, kid, but it ain’t. Tachikaze’s a bitch to deal with, most of the wind-element ones are. But I managed, and so can you. And for all his flaws, Gin is a damn good judge of strength, so if he and I both believe you can reach Bankai, then you damn well can, brat, and I suggest you do. It’s been a while, but I still know what’s best for my Division, and that,” Kensei snapped, jabbing a finger at Shuuhei’s forehead, “happens to be _you_. Kids like you and that redheaded pineapple are exactly what the Seireitei needs right now; shake ‘em up, keep ‘em honest, for a change. So you’d better -”

“Oi, Kensei!”

What the hell was it with Visoreds and sneaking up on people? Then again, Kensei’s rant could have blocked out a heard of approaching elephants - one skinny Vizored was nothing. “Hirako-tai -”

“You call me ‘taichou,’ kid, and I will go Hollow on your ass,” Shinji informed him, strolling forward. Shuuhei bit back the honorific, biting his tongue in the process, and quickly corrected himself.

“Ah, Shinji-san?”

“Whatever. Kensei, Mashiro sent me after you, Lisa’s birthday party is starting and she said she doesn’t want you missing the strippers.”

Beside Shuuhei, Kensei made a noise of wordless disgust, shaking his head. “That idiot. If she tries to get me up there with them again this year, I’m gonna...” Apparently unable to think of an effective enough threat, he merely shook his head again.

“You could threaten to have Hachi join the show as well,” Shinji suggested, snickering, and Kensei and Hisagi shared a mutual grimace. 

“Right, I’m coming,” Kensei sighed, pushing himself off the bench to follow the Vizored leader. He paused before he got more than a few steps, though, glancing back at Shuuhei over his shoulder. “Oh, one more thing, kid.”

“Sir?”

“Forget what they told you about achieving Bankai. It’s not about surpassing your Zanpakutou. It’s about surpassing _yourself_.”

With that, he turned and strode off, vanishing into the deepening shadows. Shuuhei stared after him for a long moment, then slowly rose and walked back to Urahara’s shop. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Three days later, Hisagi and Renji stood in front of the Senkaimon, packs over their shoulders. The residents of the Shop were loitering behind them, having already said their farewells.

As the gates slid open, Shuuhei glanced back over his shoulder, meeting the narrow gaze of the man standing silently at the far edge of the group, an outcast even among outcasts. 

“Oi, Ichimaru!” He called, sharply, and the man’s head snapped up, silver eyes widening in surprise. 

“....thanks,” Shuuhei said softly, and, for the first time in his memory, saw a small, genuine smile flicker across Gin’s face. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“No.”

“You are quite certain you will not reconsider?” Byakuya asked calmly, not at all perturbed. It was the answer he’d been expecting, after all.

“I most certainly will not. The Kuchiki clan wanted nothing to do with me when I was born; I fail to see why they should have such a drastic change of heart now,” she sniffed, looking affronted. 

“Regrettably, I cannot ignore the ultimatum the elders have presented to me. And while I have no desire to remarry, I cannot condone the thought of allowing Rukia to be forced into an engagement she would no doubt find equally distasteful. The only remaining option I can see is -”

“Is asking the clan bastards to come back into the fold? That’s unlike you, Kuchiki-taichou. And I can’t imagine the elders would approve.”

He took a delicate sip of his tea before answering. “I did not seek their approval on this matter.”

“You came to me before the elders? How flattering.”

“There is no need to be sarcastic.”

“Kuchiki-taichou, as kind as it is of you to allow me this opportunity, I am afraid I must decline. For one thing, I know it pains you to see the results of your father’s adultery. I can’t imagine what it must have cost you to make me this offer, and I do thank you. But, I have no desire to accept admission to the clan.”

“I admit I expected as much,” Byakuya answered, trying not to let the vague weight of disappointment settle too heavily on his shoulders. His half-sister, the result of his father’s infidelity, had been one of his few hopes of escaping the stranglehold the clan elders were weaving around his throat. 

Even if she was not an acknowledged child of the Kuchiki clan, she had the blood, and their grandfather, Ginrei, had ensured her excellent education after their father’s imprisonment. She had joined the Shinigami at a young age, and risen quickly through the ranks to become a respected officer. Bringing her into the clan to bear a successor would have satisfied the elders.

Setting her empty cup back down, she regarded him with pale lavender-blue eyes so like his own, and he thought he could detect a hint of pity in their depths. “I’m sorry, Byakuya-san. I wish I could help you, but what you ask of me -”

“I understand,” he answered, allowing himself the faintest trace of a smile. “The clan has done little to earn your favor over the years. Thank you for your time.”

Taking that as the dismissal it was, Ise Nanao rose, bowed, and left the room.


End file.
